


Boy With a Broken Soul

by nessundorma345 (wastrelwoods)



Series: The Madman and the Trickster [4]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Doctor Who, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bonding Time is not meant to be taken literally gentlemen, Christmas special with almost no Christmas because it's March, M/M, Tony as a Time Lord, it's a fix-it fic but not in the way you think, mindfuckery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-29
Updated: 2014-03-29
Packaged: 2018-01-17 10:41:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1384543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wastrelwoods/pseuds/nessundorma345
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An interlude. </p><p>The threads of a thousand plans are beginning to twist together, weaving around two madmen in a frantic game of shadows. They have their own agendas to balance, as well as a mutual, unstoppable pull that has them gravitating closer than either cares to admit wanting.</p><p>The Mechanic has a promise to keep. Loki has Death herself to outrun. And, as always, they have worlds to save.</p><p>(The Madman and the Trickster, episode four)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Boy With a Broken Soul

**Author's Note:**

> _Oh, dig my shallow grave,_  
>  'Cause it's not me you'll save,  
> 'Cause I'm a lost cause,  
> A lost, lost cause
> 
>  
> 
> -Lost Cause by Imagine Dragons

Far past the reaches of Yggdrasil's furthest roots, beyond the borders of worlds known to any of sound mind, the darkness shifted. A shadowy figure coalesced into being, red horns tearing open the sky. The newcomer showed his razor teeth in an animalistic smile. It had not been an easy journey. 

Scarcely had his tailor-made shoes brushed the ground when a wailing screech split the silence. The figure watched with a disinterested air as a dozen mottled-grey foot soldiers gathered like flies to a corpse, leveling weapons at him which dripped dark blood and hummed with energy. Hissing an indecipherable warning about equivalent to a gurgle, the bravest of the amassed forces jabbed at the stranger in challenge. 

The figure paid it no mind, adjusting one ruby cufflink with a clawed hand as the offender dropped to his feet, a puppet with its strings cut neatly in twain. Obligingly, the rest took a step back, still chattering. 

A long moment went by, difficult to calculate because of the peculiar time shifts of the howling abyss of a hundred trillion stars and no sun. The parties were on no level as equal as an impasse, with the intruder still smiling and leaning against a bone-white column of stone as the onlookers twitched uncomfortably. Peering down his nose, the horned stranger pushed a heel against the limp corpse, rolling it away. 

All looked up in anticipation at the arrival of a hooded and grey-skinned creature draped in armor and a coppery smell. The Other smiled savagely back at the intruder, his teeth red-stained and canine. "You come a long way to die," he remarked, with a patronizing tilt of the head. 

"That is not how I would put it," the stranger corrected with a voice like a legion of demons. "I have come here in search of Death, yes, but not to succumb to Her." 

"Her?" said the Other with interest, holding up a hand to stay the restless force. 

Mephistopheles straightened calmly, brushing dust from the arm of his suit jacket and staring down the Other's shrouded face with his pure white eyes. "I think you'll find we serve a common Mistress, if your master's affections tend as he claims."  

Had the Other eyes, they might have flashed indignantly. "Doubt not his devotion to Mistress Death. His heart is Hers entirely, and he will unravel the universe to weave the threads of Her cloak." 

"I deal not in hearts, but in souls," the demon said, with an esoteric quirk of his lips. "And there is one we have found which may prove relevant to your master's...interests." 

"He has already found the one who will begin the invasion," the Other growled, calling off the rest of the soldiers with a sweeping gesture. "A puppet-king," he extrapolated, "Cast from grace. If revenge will not bend him to our purposes, he will nevertheless be soon convinced." 

If possible, Mephistopheles' smile grew wider, almost triumphant. "You had him, true," he allowed. "But your puppet ally is lost to you now, is he not? stolen from your grasp?"

Taking a grandiose step forward, ineffective in tempering the demon's feral grin despite his threatening posture, the Other snapped, "That is no concern of yours!"

At that, the intruder laughed. "I have already told you that we share common goals, little spokesman." He turned half away, horns curving like the fangs of a snake. "What our Mistress desires, we desire." 

The Other frowned, stepping away smoothly. "And what do you propose?" 

Mephistopheles flicked a clawed hand, sending something small and silver on a straight path through the thin air. The Other intercepted the blade, catching it between two thumbs. "I will help you to find what you seek. Your master, in his generosity, will preserve a few of the souls he reaps for my express collection." 

"You ask much, demon," warned the Other. "Many regret making such demands of him." 

Unfazed, Mephistopheles raised a brow. "He will come to realize the necessity of our bargain, I am sure." 

The Other stared him down for a long moment, running his gray fingers over the sharp blade, still bearing the evidence of its juncture in the demon's side. It was a vicious affair, so thin as to be nearly invisible, and so small that it would take an experienced marksman to grip the blade properly. There was no doubting that it belonged to the one they sought. "You can find us the Silvertongue?"

"But of course," promised the demon, white eyes drifting just over the Other's right shoulder with a smug intensity, and flashing his fangs reassuringly. "He is here already." 

*

Loki woke to silence, his heart freezing in his chest and seizing between two beats in a desperate spasm. He stared into the darkness, unblinking and unbreathing, for a span that seemed to last years, and then his heart began to beat again, a frantic gallop that left him gasping softly as he could manage.

Once already, his terrorized thrashings had alerted the ship's ever-watchful eyes and the worried attention of the Mechanic, a short interview during which Loki had stared sullenly and unconvincingly at the ground while a few awkward questions had been posed and left unanswered. He would not be making that mistake again, whether or not he could control the dreams themselves, which flashed behind his eyes like clockwork the moment his lids dropped. 

Mostly, they were memories. The air being sucked out of his lungs, stolen from his gaping mouth like the void had stolen all else, or perhaps dreams of ice and betrayal, both his own and those of the people he'd once relied upon even when he did not trust himself. Every so often, he would remember the Other's bared, bloodied teeth grimacing at him in the malevolent dark. 

This latest, he considered, still breathing heavily even as he shuddered off the last remnants of sleep and stood, was new, and boded nothing but ill, regardless of whether or not it all proved a hallucination of his overactive mind. Still, Loki rationalized, escaping the confines of the barren quarters he'd not bothered to settle into, bare feet moving unaffected against the cold floor of the corridors, it made sense that a collector of souls would, in fact, seek him out. Mistress Death herself was likely quite preoccupied, or Loki suspected he would have been long ago reduced to a bloodless and bloated corpse drifting endlessly through the void. 

By the nine, but that line of thinking was not getting much easier to wrap his head around. Not that Loki sought death, a truth which he had embraced more than a year ago and only recently begun to reevaluate, but that She sought him in return. 

He supposed, trailing spindly fingers along the wall beside him, that he was doomed. Unless, somehow, the Mechanic made good on his promise, which seemed entirely too optimistic an outlook to be relied upon. 

Loki paused, one bare foot hovering over the threshold, and peered into the darkness of the console room. Strange, that in all his nightly wanderings never once had his roaming feet led him to the ship's only other occupant, and yet hardly unorthodox. Thus far, he had simply assumed that the Mechanic either slept far more regularly than he, or did not wish to be found. But now there he sat, occupying the very spot Loki tended towards, just beyond the reach of the display's light. From this angle, a few yards to the right and behind, it was impossible to tell whether his host was even awake. 

Loki found that he didn't know whether or not he desired the companionship the possibility offered. There was only minimal danger of being thought weak for the haunted quality he knew still lurked in his eyes and the tension of his spine. And yet...Loki found he could not continue on into the room. 

Damn the man, he resigned, exhaling lightly as he turned away. Damn his predilection for sticking his overlarge nose into Loki's business, and damn his own thrice-cursed cowardice.

"You going my way, Green Eyes?" 

The strangest fond smile pulled at the corners of Loki's mouth without his consent, and he smothered the reaction with a sharp curse. "Forgive the intrusion," he appealed. "I'll..."

"Oh, for fuck's sake." There was a scrape and squeal as the Mechanic turned his chair to face the doorway. "Just sit down, would you? I'm the one who stole your brooding spot." 

Loki pulled a face, affronted. His feet propelled him forward, and he followed blindly, glad for the distraction. "I do not _brood_ , Stark." 

The Mechanic snorted softly, nodding his head towards an adjoining seat, which Loki ignored in favor of settling against the floor some feet away. He felt exposed, like prey, hands still unsteady where they curled around his legs, pulled up close to his chest. "Would it kill you to call me by my name?" 

"You never offered it," Loki drawled. "Only a variety of equally boastful _nom de plumes_ to choose between." 

"You know what's pretentious, Shakespeare, is using the phrase _nom de plume_ in casual conversation," offered the Mechanic, turning back to his dimly lit work table, on which a helmet sat, half in pieces. "Besides," he continued, picking up the gold faceplate and scrawling a broken circle in one corner. "It's not like you've been overly forthcoming yourself." 

In an effort to suspend ignorance of his current half-panicked state, Loki let his legs slide down and leaned back into the railing. "You simply have not asked the right questions." 

The Mechanic stared at him over the smooth metal of the faceplate, which he seemed now to be adjusting from the inside. "Guess I'd better start, then." It was Loki's turn to snort at that. The Mechanic flashed a row of white teeth, letting the faceplate clatter against the worktable surface with a flick of the wrist. "What's your favorite color?" 

Taken slightly aback, Loki turned to meet his eyes, which sparkled with earnest curiosity. "I beg your pardon?" 

He raised an eyebrow with an impatient air. "You heard me." He shifted in the chair until he was straddling it, chin propped against the back. "I mean, a hundred to one it's green, with a wardrobe like yours, but fuck it, I might as well just ask. How's that sound? a question for a question. Little getting-to-know-you exercise, minus the fruit basket."

Loki's tongue darted out to wet his lips. The man was strange, probing so intently for such petty trivia that the trickster's over-paranoid hindbrain buzzed with alarm. It was nothing, he told himself, this meant nothing. "Red," Loki admitted, which earned him another incredulous look. He smiled softly, not offering further explanation. "Yourself?"

"Well, there's at least one thing we've got in common," the Mechanic announced. "Who'd have thought?"

"Banner seemed to think we could find other common ground," Loki ventured, uncertain why he'd mentioned it. "Though he seemed to rely upon the assumption that the both of us were mad as hatters." 

There was a short pause. "You're not phrasing that as a question?"

"I don't ask questions I already know the answers to," he explained, with a vague hand-wave. "I could feign ignorance, of course, but it does get so tedious." 

"The point, hitchhiker," the Mechanic drawled. "You're missing it." 

"And you are as unbalanced as I," Loki countered. "I have untreated lesions in my mental defenses. What's your excuse?"

Another, longer pause followed, during which the Mechanic's eyebrow traveled slowly higher on his face. "You know, you're absolute shit at this non-invasive question thing, but you're really good at making invasive ones sound innocent. I almost answered that."

"Every question holds some such potential," Loki retorted, shifting fluidly from sprawl to crouch. "An experienced enough questioner can use any answer you give to pry into your mind, no matter how vague the question." As he stood, he flashed an extremely wooden grin. "For example: I could ask if you had ever been in love, and gather from a succinct answer the effect of the lover on your life, how recently you lost them, whether you considered yourself _worthy_ of that love..." Arms folded across his chest, the Mechanic's eyes followed Loki on his slow path to the unoccupied seat opposite him.

"I could ask whether or not it's actually possible for you to stop being a manipulative bastard for ten minutes," he growled. "But I don't ask questions I already know the answers to." 

A flash of something like hatred burned in Loki's gut before turning inward. He ignored it, letting his fingers dance over the cool leather. It was like instinct, to be perfectly honest, squeezing information from a word like blood from a stone, lying and listening and forever calculating. The matter was, of course, not helped by the still-too-fast pound of his heart, the adrenaline firing through the synapses of his exposed mind. He needed this, this small victory of information, and perhaps he could suffer not to analyze it fully. "This ship, then. Did you build it? Or are you a mechanic in name only?"

This seemed to ease the tension, a proud light flickering in his dark eyes. "From the ground up. Well, I laid the foundation. JARVIS is organic, grew the rest on his own." He glanced around the room, the same joy filling his eyes as a parent watching their child. 

Without quite meaning to, Loki's thoughts flew to Frigga, the fierce glow in her eyes as he vowed vengeance, earned her favor with lies. His grip on the chair may have gone white, because the Mechanic leveled him a long, searching look. "Where did you learn magic?"

Shit. Loki breathed in sharply and a little raggedly, his knees half-buckling for a terrified moment, wondering how he knew and how much he knew, and clamping down hard on the urge to defend, to slit open his throat and run. There was nowhere to run, here. "I was taught by my...by my mother," he choked out.

The Mechanic seemed a little taken aback by the admission, chagrin coloring his cheeks, as though he hadn't realized how closely he was toeing the line that made Loki feel cornered and savage and mad. At least, Loki realized, forcing himself to breathe deeply and slowly, unclenching his fists from the back of the chair, it seemed to be only a coincidence. "Sorry," the Mechanic muttered, "Your turn." 

"Have you children?" 

"Hell no. Don't have the temperament." Still, he chanced another fond glance at the whirring machine in the corner, which chirped with a vaguely affronted air from its charging port. "You?"

Loki felt another small smile lift one corner of his mouth. "Yes," he answered simply. "Preferred fruit?"

The Mechanic wrinkled his nose in apparent disgust. "I'm more of a cheeseburger kinda guy. Bananas are good, though. On a related note, I haven't seen food in your hand since I tried to get Scarlet Witch to fix you, and even then you were mainly picking the olives off martinis. You do actually eat, right?"

"My seidr supplies for most of my needs." And it was habitual, Loki supposed, after a year of nothing but silence and numbness. He'd almost forgotten how to feel hunger. Still, he considered, with a secret appreciative glance, his time with the Mechanic was reawakening several appetites. "I am partial to apples, if you're offering." Beshrew him if he did not plan on making that apple a sight to behold, moaning around eah bite and letting the juice drip down his chin beyond reach of his talented tongue. He wondered whether it would be enough to gauge whether or not the Mechanic's desires aligned with his own. Sometimes there were better approaches than outright questioning. Loki felt that miniscule smile widen to a dangerous degree. "If you were trapped on a deserted island, able to bring along only one thing..." he began, in grandiose mocking tones.

"Don't even fucking finish that, hitchhiker. Actually, no, you lose a turn for even suggesting that one, I'm going: Stones or Beatles?"

Loki stepped neatly around the seat and sunk down, tilting his head back with a raised brow. 

"Oh, come on, seriously? Earth music?"

Shaking his head vaguely, Loki shrugged, hoping the motion captured his half-curious nonchalance. 

The Mechanic sniffed as though deeply offended. "Well, the right answer is Stones, and the best answer is neither, AC/DC trumps both." Loki shrugged again, accepting, and the Mechanic looked expectantly toward his incorporeal intelligence. "Soothe my soul, JAR, the man's an uneducated heathen." 

"The usual playlist, Sir?" 

"Thrill me. Actually, no, thrill him. Sweetheart, we're gonna blow your mind," he punctuated, snapping a finger and leveling it in his direction. The trickster settled in, resigning himself to an impromptu music lesson. 

The first high wail of the guitar broke the silence like a thunderclap. A thrumming bass set in the background, low and pulsing, like the beat of a heart. When the man began singing, Loki's brow furrowed with the effort to separate one lyric from the next. Once the chorus settled in, though, he began to understand, and lowered his head to the seat back with a put-upon sigh. _And I was shakin' at the kneeees! Could I come again, pleeeease?_

"What? Seriously, what?" The Mechanic sat up. "Don't tell me you have a problem with Brian Johnson." 

"I'm simply not overfond of the subject matter," Loki explained, as the singer wailed on. "It's a little off-putting." _You've been thunderstruck! Thunderstruuuck!_ It took an unsurprising amount of effort not to wince.

Perplexed seemed the best word to evaluate the Mechanic's expression, and slightly offended besides. The screaming chorus subsided into an electric pounding, and he turned a narrow-eyed stare Loki's way. "Whatever," he sighed, snapping his fingers again as he leaned back. The music-- well, music in the loosest sense of the word-- cut off as abruptly as it had begun. The Mechanic turned away, growling something under his breath that sounded a little like, "No appreciation for goddamn art, that's what your problem is." 

Loki rolled his eyes, but a burning curiosity rose to the surface of his thoughts. "Why do you care so for the people of Midgard?"

"Earth, darling, we've been over this a dozen times," he corrected over one shoulder, now back to toying with the metal mask. 

"It's all one, dearest, as I've said before," he suggested, staring rather openly at the Mechanic's deft hands and grease-spotted arms, dimly aware of a hot prickling at his neck that would not subside even as he shifted in his seat. Loki's tongue wet his lips again, and for a heady moment he forgot the point he had been about to make. Something about paltry mortals and...was it the lack of sleep or just excess adrenaline that drew him so inscrutably towards the Mechanic? "Humans," he reminded himself, the hoarse quality to his voice causing the Time Lord to spin back around with a questioning purse of lips. "They're so...small, are they not? Gone in the blink of an eye." 

"How old did you say you were again?" the Mechanic pointed out with sarcastic tones. 

"Impolite of you to ask, isn't it?" Loki may have batted his eyelashes. More honey in the trap, really, in for a pound as soon as a penny. "A millenium and a quarter, if you must know." Give or take, he realized, wondering whether he even knew his true birth date. 

"Wow," he swallowed, a little wide-eyed, which did tend to happen when confronted with an ageless god. "You are looking _phenomenal_ for your age, hitchhiker."

"As are you," Loki demurred, with a polite nod. 

"Yeah, but you and I? We have millenia to go, right? And humans struggle to make a century." The Mechanic shrugged, screwdriver in one hand and mask in the other. "Which, you can argue good or bad about short lifespan all you want, but there's one thing you can't ignore, hon: They live that century to the fullest," he finished, with a jab of the screwdriver. "Make the most of that little time. Gotta love 'em. You watch, hitchhiker; wait and see them spread out among the stars. It's fucking beautiful, what they create." 

Loki smiled, unable to help but follow in the Mechanic's footsteps, although he remained much less exhuberant, if not apathetic. "And you are a creator, correct? A mechanic? You love the mortals because you share a common cause." 

He put down the tools and toys, looking at Loki almost in wonder. The Mechanic's smile thinned into something more private, so sentimental that Loki felt his heart twist. They were like polar opposites, it seemed. The one who created and the one who destroyed. He would poison this man, if he got too close, spread chaos through his blood and turn him into something terrible and no less beautiful in its destruction. His ruin would be the trickster's greatest and only creation.

Loki found no pleasure in the thought, even as his smile sharpened like a knife. 

"You know what's weird," said the Mechanic, voice softer and hoarser and layered with undefinable things that made Loki's head spin. When had he gotten so close? "I always want to fix things. But you?" His calloused fingers reached out to brush along an exposed collarbone, dark eyes black with want. The realization surprised Loki, that this pull went both ways, though he could not say he minded overly, thighs clenching involuntarily as he leaned into the hesitant contact. "I kinda want to break you, Loki," he admitted, voice dark. "I want to destroy you." 

And, oh, he _burned_ , surging forward until their mouths met in a clash of teeth and tongues. It was different than the last time, less frantic and desperate, no longer a distraction and a last-ditch effort. Loki was drawn half out of his chair with the movement, trapping the Mechanic in his seat with his hands on the armrests as their tongues slid across each other and a breathless noise escaped him. 

Climbing onto his seat, deepening the kiss if possible with the reduction of distance, Loki straddled his lap. The Mechanic did not seem to mind, gasping out a curse and burying his hands in Loki's hair. "Fuck." 

He was reluctant to surface, pulling back scarce an inch and making up for the pause with a sinuous roll if his hips that had them both moaning. "Not if I destroy you first," Loki whispered harshly, eyes lit up with lust. 

A whine escaped the Mechanic at that, pulling him in closer to devour his mouth again, slowly, as though breathing him in. Heat flared beneath Loki's skin, electric and heady, like magic newly awoken. He'd always loved this, losing his mind and drowning himself in pleasure. The trickster felt a positively sinful noise torn from his throat as the Mechanic moved along his jaw, his scarred hands tugging Loki's hair to direct him. Let it never be said that he was not a hedonist, or on some level a masochist, he vowed, baring his neck compliantly. 

"Your turn," Loki purred, his hands sliding from their grip on the Mechanic's arms to tease at the edge of his tunic, loosening the laces to make room for his greedy mouth. The Mechanic grunted distractedly, his beard scraping over Loki's neck as his tongue traced the hollows below his jaw. 

"What?" His voice was hoarse and his eyes half-lidded as he watched Loki tug the fabric over his head and drop it to the floor behind them. The air was pleasantly cool against his feverish skin. 

"Your turn," Loki elaborated, and could not help but roll his hips forward again at the hungry, needy, desperate look in the Mechanic's eyes. "To ask a question," he continued, half panting.

"I have a lot of questions," he managed in reply, already lowering his tongue to trace a line just above Loki's collarbone. "Really good ones. I just don't know whether to ask how you want it," he murmured against his skin, "Or how you want me." 

"I suppose we'll find out," Loki replied, his head falling forward onto the Mechanic's shoulder as he continued his minstrations, tugging at the hem of the sleeveless white shirt he wore. "Are you particularly-- ah--attatched to this?" 

The Mechanic hummed noncomitally, flicking his thumb gently over a nipple once more. Entire being throbbing with a mixture of pleasure and pain, Loki inhaled sharply and tore the thin shirt neatly in two. "Holy shit!" The Mechanic's eyes flicked up, wide with disbelief as he discarded the pieces. "Warn a guy, maybe?"

Loki shot him a lascivious grin, but it was only momentary, the buzz at the back of his skull receding as he reached a finger tentatively toward the glowing circle implanted in his chest. The surface was cooler than expected, but jolting, like brushing a live wire. Loki traced the edge of the device, semi-aware as the Mechanic stiffened, one hand still tight on the back of his neck and the other drifting lower, like he wanted to push away. 

_The Silvertongue will tear out their hearts..._

He pulled back as though burned, buzz of adrenaline now gone completely. Loki felt almost hollow, an emotion bordering on guilt spurring another rush of the familiar self-loathing. "The mortal girl you lost," he intoned, and his voice sounded like an echo, rough with something that seemed as alien as sentiment. "Your lover." The hand at his neck loosened and fell away. "What was her name?"

"Virginia." 

Another smile crept over him, this one far more familiar in its bitterness. "I see. And the corresponding protocol was meant to send her home when no other route was forseeable." His jawline and neck still stung with remembered attentions, marks and bruises slowly forming. "And she ignored your wishes."

The Mechanic's eyes had fluttered shut, his jaw tight. "Kinda like you, actually," he admitted, exhaling through his nose as though it required the utmost concentration. He opened his eyes slowly, fixing Loki with a mirrored hollow look, feeling nothing preferable to remembering. "Why?" 

Loki opened his mouth and closed it again, no easy reply coming to mind or silver tongue. "I..." _I made a bargain with the shadows, to give myself up in exchange for information. They turned on me, of course, but at the time I didn't much care for the continuation of my own life. Did you know that I'm being chased by the personification of death itself and Her various allies? I still don't know whether they plan to torture me, ransom me, kill me, or use me as a weapon of mass destruction to enslave the entire universe. Oh, and by the way, the Silvertongue is actually me. Sorry I neglected to mention it._ He settled for swallowing and letting his eyes drift. "Does it matter?"

Scoffing, he shoved Loki roughly from his lap. He found his feet with some difficultly, taking a few steps back to maintain balance. The Mechanic crossed his arms to cover the glowing circle neatly. "I want to know why the fuck people keep trying to die for me."

"I had no intention of doing anything so halfwitted and sentimental as _dying_ for you, Mechanic dear," Loki snarled. It was the one truth he could admit to. 

"And Jones?" The snarl froze on Loki's face as his insides twisted, a flare of white-hot rage shooting up his spine to paralyze him where he stood. "Was he idiotic and sentimental?"

When he bent to retrieve his tunic from the floor, he thought his neck would snap from the tension in his shoulders. "He was a fool," Loki repeated dully. A damnable fool, so young and brash and _so much like Thor_. 

"Yeah," agreed the Mechanic, as he was halfway turned to leave. "So was Virginia."

*

"Ta-da!" he offered, throwing open the door with a foot and making a sweeping gesture into the softly falling snow, which was a little unexpected but damn if he minded. So it wasn't quite the June landing he'd planned on. By the looks of things the location was still about right. 

Hitchhiker just wrinkled his nose like that was a suitable reply in any way. "Ah," he murmured, brushing past Tony to stand just beyond JARVIS's shields with his coattails flapping in the wind, because his showboating tendencies rivalled Tony's own, "Here we are again. Your precious _Earth_."

A sneer. An actual, full-out sneer curled his lip up haughtily, and the Mechanic rolled his eyes. "I'm glad we're finally making progress on the name thing, darling." He'd have to try harder if he really wanted a fight, and both of them knew it. This was more frustration than actual animosity. Just to make clear that Tony knew exactly which cards his companion was playing and didn't care because he had at least three aces up each sleeve, he gave Loki a demeaning pat on the back as he passed. He heard a faint snarl in reply, and had to bite down on his lip to swallow a giggle. So touchy. 

Checking up and down the street a little, the Mechanic sighed in disappointment. They were a little far out from the Institute yet, had a bit of a walk before them, and the cold was already making his chest ache. Still, he wasn't quite willing to risk hopping back in the ship and trying for a closer landing, and he wasn't about to don the armor and tell the hitchhiker to hold on tight for the sake of a few creature comforts like flight and in-suit heating. Besides, Loki's heat signature was just fucked up enough that he probably didn't mind a stroll in the snow, and Tony was not about to be the weakest link.

"We are near the same city, too," came the smooth calculation from a couple yards behind him. Tony blew out a thin breath, watching the steam rise. 

"Few miles north, yeah," he admitted somewhat distractedly, still weighing the benefits and detriments of having Loki drag them both through the shadows with his magic fingers, deciding it was unlikely to work if he wasn't sure where they were going and the Mechanic himself was crying over broken physics again. 

Gradually, he realized that he was still being spoken to. "...odd coincidence," Loki was saying, a little more intent in his soft voice as the snow cruched beneath his feet. "It almost makes one wonder whether it would not have been simpler to start here, rather than _halfway across the galaxy_." His voice was dripping vitriol by the end of the unspoken accusation, and the Mechanic whirled around to see him standing much closer than he'd been before. Taken a little by surprise and more than slightly concerned with the black ire burning in those green eyes, he stumbled back a bit and nearly ended up ass-down in the snow. 

"Do we have to do this now?" It came out more like a surrender than he'd intended. 

"Did you have some better time and place in mind? Because if so, I urge you, bring me there and have done with it." Desperation colored his tone, just faint enough for Tony to feel it sink claws into his stomach. And hell, probably it was more underhanded manipulation and about as genuine as a plastic office plant, but that did nothing to stop his feeling guilty. "My commendations for managing to keep me distracted so long with wild goose chases and petty equivocations, Mechanic dear," Loki awarded, his eyes cold as he turned away with jaw clenched. "But I'm sorry to say that I am beginning to grow tired of the games." 

"What, you think I'm just dragging you around willy-nilly for my own amusement? I'm sorry, sweet pea, there aren't a lot of experts in this sort of thing; nobody's got a phD in metaphysical reconstruction," the Mechanic defended. "I'm doing everything I can to find people who can even begin to know how to help!" 

Tony could actually see the moment when Loki caught the lie in midair and crumpled it in one pale palm, set it on fire and scattered the ashes to the four winds, turning back to him with a sneer. "Doctor Banner?" He raised a finely sculpted eyebrow with incredulity Tony could actually almost taste. 

He didn't have a good reply ready for that, to be honest, and maybe floundered a bit for a more convincing half-truth that didn't make it sound like he'd been purposely prolonging their one-trip deal for reasons even he was unsure of. "Um," Tony managed, at length. 

"Although," Loki mused, "He was some help, seeing fit to point out that I had made quite an egregious error." He was doing that thing, looking off into the swirling snow of the middle distance like all his attention wasn't still completely focused on the Mechanic. It was a pretty good technique, gave him the upper hand by making him seem harmless if you weren't looking hard enough, and omniscient if you dug a little deeper, which was kind of a catch-22 because if then he commanded your full attention and had the upper hand anyway. It was one of those little intricacies that sent Tony's thoughts into a downward spiral that always ended up at, 'Can you reverse engineer people? Because I really wanna try.' 

He licked his lips, which felt pretty damn dry and hot considering they were standing in the middle of a snowstorm. "Yeah. Brucie's pretty good at doing that for a guy who's generally not at all confrontational." _Look, Tony, if you're so worried that travelling with you will destroy someone's humanity, find someone who's not human. Problem solved!_

"I underestimated you," Loki continued, neatly blocking his attempt to turn the conversation. "I won't be doing so again." The disapproving angle at which he looked down his nose toward the Mechanic did wonders to communicate how completely he was done with this bullshit. Which, Tony could sympathize. It took two, after all. 

"What, so you've got problems, and that makes you the victim here?" summarized the Mechanic, more than a subtle twinge of annoyance spiking behind his eyes. "Newsflash, hitchhiker: you're not the only one who's ever been played. And don't tell me you've never been on the recieving end." Ignoring the murdurous glare Loki was shooting his way intense enough to cause second-degree burns, he took a deliberate step forward. "The number of mind games you play? At least one has to have come back to give you a nasty bite in the ass. It's the rules of the game, sweetheart." 

Actually, he kind of regretted that last bit almost immediately, feeling naked in a decidedly not-fun way under the piercing, calculating stare he recieved in response to that. Loki was taking him apart,  ripping his thoughts out with every second he spent just standing motionless with those green eyes fixed on his. Trying to give back as good as he got, Tony exhaled in a huff, and stared right back. He could do this all day, except maybe not when an esoteric, smug little grin flickered over one side of Loki's lips and he relaxed visibly. "Interesting," he hissed so softly that Tony nearly mistook it for a laugh. 

The Mechanic's eyes narrowed in helpless anger at being outmaneuvered. "Fuck you," he growled, low in the back of his throat. "Just, fuck you." 

"My mind is an open wound!" Loki bristled with indignant rage, teeth bared as his arms were flung wide in a sweeping gesture. "A weakness that I cannot afford to suffer any longer, Stark, and you know it as well as I." Falling back like he was tightening the lead on his emotions, his jaw clenched. "Keep your promise."

"And then what?" he demanded. "You run off to God-knows-when and where? Fly away home?" His fingers were starting to numb from the winter air, creeping up his spine like claws and seizing in his chest, where the metal of the reactor burned with cold. "Because unless I miss my guess, honey, you got nowhere to go."

"I am no charity case, Mechanic. You will not keep me as some animal found on the streets, bedraggled and wretched." 

"No," Tony interjected, "You were tumbling through uncharted space, weren't you?"

"Because I wished to be!" Loki snapped, eyes flashing with that faraway glint of batshit insanity that mirrored the Mechanic's own. A second of snow-muffled silence followed, during which Tony made a few connections between one or two other passing comments that left him shivering with something deeper than cold. An absolutely foul smile framed Loki's lips. "I do not want the same things now I wanted then, mistake me not, but I will see this bargain fulfilled, and then, yes, I will leave if I so choose."

 _Posturing_ , the Mechanic thought, though he didn't know why he felt so certain of the judgement. Maybe it was just his insatiable curiosity showing itself, that desire to see the two of them a year in the future, a hundred years, still side by side like they'd been on that rooftop in Manhattan, facing down a demon. Maybe the Mechanic was just certain that he'd be staring down at a broken corpse or an impersonal gravestone yet again, because no matter how many times he saved the universe the bitch still hated him with all her power. But still, there was so little to be certain of, nothing with Loki was like anything he'd seen or done before. Maybe they'd even stand on opposite sides of a line with weapons bared and wonder who had balls enough to fire the first shot. "All space and time doesn't interest you, then? You've had better offers?" 

Wires seemed to connect in the back of the hitchhiker's brain somewhere, cutting short his derisive scoff. Green eyes narrowed in split-second consideration, like he was weighing every variable, or maybe just considering where exactly to plant the dagger when he followed through and buggered off with the ship himself. Tony really hoped that was just his paranoid brain's translation of Loki's expression. 

"You have spent so long outrunning Death in that ship of yours," he mused, and Tony was pretty sure he heard a misplaced capital letter in there somewhere. "She would be hard-pressed indeed to follow such a winding path." 

That...raised at least a dozen questions the Mechanic didn't think he'd ever be asking, least of all of a companion. Hoping that he wasn't agreeing to his own murder after all, he extended a hand. "Is that a yes?" 

Smiling in that really patronizing way of his, Loki took the hand in his own. "You have my alliance, for the present moment." If Tony's own hand was numb, it was nothing compared to the solid, biting cold of Loki's skin, which cut through the numbness like a knife to introduce him to another whole layer of pain. " _If_ I can be assured of your own." Loki looked up, expectant, and Tony raised an eyebrow at the warmth seeming to gather beneath his fingertips where they rested on his wrist.

"Weird," the Mechanic hissed under his breath, but didn't pull his hand away. "Uh, to...have and to hold, 'til death do us part?"

"Fool," he snapped, "Give me your sworn word." 

"To what?" 

Hitchhiker just glared at him, and while Tony'd been on the recieving end of a few stares that made him worry whether looks could kill, that fear was kind of relevant here because _magic_ was happening right now and that probably could kill him pretty goddamn efficiently.

"You, uh...have my alliance," he echoed. If not my trust, he amended silently. "Hey, does that include booty call rights, or--holy hell, Batman!" Sparks shot up his arm like an electric shock, and Tony could literally feel them seep into the arc reactor, his free hand rising to clutch at his chest as a shower of golden threads--and was all magic threads, seriously--seemed to bind their joined hands together. The Mechanic knew the expression on his face was something like horrified and aroused, while Loki looked slightly queasy and otherwise unaffected. 

The strings pulled taut around them and faded from sight, a tingling warmth left from the energy exchange. Tony tried not to read into how quickly both of them pulled away from the contact, cautious relief etched onto their faces. "Some day I would have you explain the force which powers your heart, Mechanic," promised the hitchhiker, lacking some of his former energy. 

"Hearts, actually," he amended, "And no." 

Loki seemed intrigued by the former answer and annoyed by the latter. "No?"

"Being my companion--"

"Ally."

" _\--companion_ gets you a lot of places, but that is not one of them. It's a sonic pacemaker, helps with some heart trouble of mine, and that's all you need to know."

Undaunted, Loki shrugged off the refusal with a flex of his fingers at his side. "I could ask nicely."

"Yeah, but you'll only get an answer if the terms of this whole alliance deal prevent me from witholding the information."

"And if they do?"

"They don't, because then it would go both ways, and you'd never allow that, would you, hitchhiker?" He stepped closer, head tilted to the side, poking the sleeping bear with something like glee. "You keep your secrets, and trust I'll be keeping my promises."

An amused glint lit up Loki's green eyes, which was definitely not a good sign and had the Mechanic glancing over his shoulder warily, just on principle. "I should hope so, Mechanic, bound at the soul as you are towards that purpose." Tony tried to call bullshit, really he did, but even as his lips formed the words he could feel a net of invisible strings tighten around the arc reactor, a vaguely uncomfortable pressure and a warning. Grinning like a shark, Loki leered. "Ally." 

Torn between the urge to shudder and the ever-growing desire to land a well-deserved punch on his companion's jaw, Tony gritted his teeth. He could pander a little, he used to be a businessman. "Bound, huh?" he echoed, grabbing at Loki's hand and tugging just a mite too hard. It was worth it just to hear the surprised _oof_ he got in return. "No time to waste, then." 

*

In the end, they barely made it three blocks, Tony's limbs sluggish with cold as they trudged through the heavy, wet snow. Loki hovered uncomfortably behind him, having tugged his hand away again so as not to be dragged like a disobedient dog on a leash, but unable to take the lead because he didn't know the way. 

Not that the Mechanic knew either, he'd only been a handful of times. But he had a good feel for sensing these sort of things, and the Institute set off a homing beacon of a Somebody Else's Problem field that could be seen for miles if you knew what to look for. There was, of course, always the risk of one of the kids taking the visit the wrong way, but a few strings tugged in the web of Tony's vast social network should clear up any misconceptions. 

Except, of course, he remembered belatedly, raising his hands pacifically, for the part where everyone had forgotten he existed. That made things a little harder. 

Loki heaved a sigh as he raised his own hands, shooting the Mechanic a sideways glance. "You'd forgotten."

"Look, I don't usually have this problem," he hissed back, then obligingly smiled as one of the crew sent him stumbling forward with a crack of a gun butt against his shoulder. 

"Stop talking," said the one he'd mentally dubbed Agent What-Crawled-Up-My-Ass-And-Died. Possibly he was just sexually frustrated, which, hey, Tony could sympathize with.

" _Grant,_ " chastised the post-hippie kid, looking uncomfortable and civilian. Tony could also relate, sort of.

Loki was busy sizing up the single agent with a gun trained on him as she did the same, both playing admirable poker-faces. The Mechanic really hoped that he wasn't about to try it, because there was definitely a reason she was the only one covering him and seriously, this lady looked fit to take on Natasha on a bad day and win. 

Recovering from that undignified little stumble, Tony looked up in time to feel his knees buckle again, a cocktail of pure adrenaline and fear and a generous helping of guilt freezing solid in his bones. "Shit," he mumbled. 

"I said stop talking," growled Agent Ass, and the Mechanic winced. 

"Stand down, Agent Ward," Coulson snapped, leveling Tony with that same look of total calm and unwillingness to deal with whatever bullshit he could concoct. His steely eyes were focused, probably seeing right through the Mechanic's wide-eyed calm to the hurricane of blind panic whirling inside his head. "So you're the ones who broke into UNIT headquarters last spring." 

It seemed as good an opening as any. "I'm the Mechanic, and that's Loki--"

"Yes, I know who you are," Coulson interrupted, and Tony's heart plummeted into his stomach. He didn't want to tell this story, didn't want to relive it again, even though Phil deserved to know the truth. Steeling himself to ensure his armor would be thick enough, he met the Agent's cool gaze. Less accusing than he'd expected. Odd. "It's on videotape, along with some nonsense about a mass amnesia inflicted on our people."

Tony heaved a sigh of relief, even as Coulson jerked his head and Agent Ward the Ass jabbed him in the spine with the barrel of a gun. "Ow, geez, what?" 

"I have a lot of questions for the pair of you, you can imagine." 

"Call my assistant, we'll make a date, schedule a full debrief," the Mechanic offered, gesturing vaguely with his hands still in the air. "Busy just now, sorry, but you caught us at a bad time." 

In response, Coulson pulled a gun on him. The Mechanic blinked, not entirely surprised but altogether displeased with the turn of events. Shrugging, he glanced over at the hitchhiker, who met his resigned stare with barely a twitch. _I got nothing. Your turn_.

"You can't shoot me, it's Christmas," the Mechanic complained. Something flickered in his peripheral, and he turned again to see the tail end of a brief scuffle which left Loki with a gun and a shit-eating grin, at least until Poker Face knocked his legs out from under him and pinned him to the snowy ground. Tony might have pouted in disappointment at the sight. Outmaneuvered again, it seemed. 

"Feliz Navidad," drawled Coulson, with a short nod. "Get in the car, please, both of you." 

Or maybe not, he dared to hope, steadfastly ignoring the telltale flicker of green in his peripheral vision as they were manhandled into the car by Coulson's merry elves. 

It wasn't Lola, that much was clear, but Tony suspected that Phil would rather sell his own testicles than let a common criminal take a joyride in his baby. And it was becoming abundantly that, as far as the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce gave a damn, he and the hitchhiker were criminals--fugitives, however uncommon. 

He was surprised how little Torchwood's customary warm welcome had changed now that he fell into the foe category, rather than friend. The reception was still cool, succinct, and bordering on openly hostile, maybe even a little warmer than when the Mechanic had been their ally. Still, their relationship always had been more along the lines of 'Save our sorry asses and we'll thank you with sneaky attempts to experiment on you' then any sort of mutual trust.

Alliances change, and it looked like the Mechanic would be siding with Loki for the moment. 

*

"Are you familiar with the prisoner's dilemma?" 

May tapped her foot, but he made no reply for a long moment, gaze fixed on his hands where they rested on the tabletop. "Of course."

"Then you know you have two choices: talk or stay silent." 

A soft, patronizing huff of laughter left his lips like a ring of smoke. "Betray him, or risk his betraying me in turn?" 

Leaning forward with interest, May narrowed her focus to his shadowed eyes, the precise tilt of his mouth. "What is there to betray?" 

The prisoner's expression was carefully calculated blankness, leaving no hint as to whether or not he had anything to hide when he replied, "He would not tell you, if there were."

"Would you, then?" she countered, feeling oddly like she was walking straight into a trap. His smile was visible even in shadow. 

"My dear lady, I would choose the third option, and escape." May tensed, and he quirked his head up, turning a hollow stare her way moments before dissolving into thin air. 

*

The door of the metal-plated room--fucking vibranium, Tony would stake his ass on it--clicked open unobtrusivelty, and for a split second he wondered whether Merlin was working his Magic Fingers ahead of schedule. Not that they'd really had opportunity to plan for this eventuality, but his plan relied on hoping that Loki would be smart enough not to make waves while the Mechanic spun enough bullshit to get them out in one piece. Obviously he had overestimated the trickster's intelligence a bit. 

Breaking off mid-query, Agent Ward turned to shoot a hurried glance at the door, and then stood back, removing his palms from the surface of the table and stepping away to make room for the newcomer. 

"Dismissed," they murmured coolly, crossing the room in even strides despite the turbulence of the moving plane. Maybe that was just the Mechanic, though, because sometimes he did forget to calculate for the turn of the planet under his feet and wound up easily disoriented and, according to Pep, cranky. 

Thinking about Pep was probably not the wisest of ideas at the moment, he reconsidered with an internal wince. "Coulson," Tony drawled, leaving it for the agent to puzzle out the exact dose of healthy sarcasm injected into the greeting. "Light of my hearts. To what to I owe the pleasure?" 

The door closed behind the first agent as Phil took his usual stance of judgement, hands clasped lightly in front. "We've found out how the pair of you managed breaking into a government facility, you'll be glad to know."

"Through the door?" 

Unimpressed, Coulson shifted slightly. "For a while, we thought that you just weren't in the record books. Or the files, or the databases, or on any security tape the world over, as far back as the written word and further. All we had was a few seconds of footage from one date last May, and something like evidence too impossible for any of our people to string together.

"But it has been recently brought to our attention that you used to be. Every mention of you was erased from both our data banks and our memories."

With a modest grin, the Mechanic leaned back in his seat. "Whoops," he commented, with a half-shrug. 

"But there appears to be no way to regain that stolen information."

"Not without a telepath." 

"You were looking for Charles Xavier."

"Nope," Tony sing-songed, which was technically true. Loki was, though he didn't know it yet. He was just the chauffeur. "Got all my memories in here. I'm not the one missing them."

Coulson narrowed his eyes in a way that clearly showed he thought he was onto something. "But Loki--"

"Is not amnesiac either." 

"--was never in our databases in the first place. And everyone who should exist is in our databases somewhere, Mechanic." 

Tony clenched his jaw with a grimace of a smile, making a fast-aborted attempt at folding his arms over his chest. "Sounds like you got this all figured out already. What do you even need me for?"

"Confirmation," he said lightly, and the Mechanic's stomach twisted suddenly, a split second of confusion crumbling into a sickinging rush of paranoia, anger, betrayal. _I trusted him why did I trust him why do I trust anyone when I know that the only person I can really trust is myself?_  

"No honor among thieves, huh?" Digging his fingers into the unyielding metal of the gauntlet and feigning calm harder than he ever had in his life to date, he couldn't quite manage an embarrased smile. "Damn."

"You don't seem very concerned," Phil noted, and he released a breath he hadn't been fully aware of holding. "The two of you...what are you?"

 "Partners in crime."

With an amused snort that was probably mostly a good-cop front, Coulson reached into his pocket and drew forth a little pad of paper, flipping it open and turning it to face Tony's side of the table. "You should screen your partners more carefully." 

Leaning forward, slowly because he really didn't want to know, the Mechanic felt the chorus of hurt and fear in his head growing steadily in volume. In neat, precise handwriting, there were notes jotted all over the paper. And what a doozy they were. Time Lord. Extraterrestrial technology. Pressure point: companions, friends, Virginia. _Fuck fuck fuck shit fuckfuckfuck_ , Tony thought, mind spiralling in panicky circles, and then _Oh, that's just unfair_.

"You bastard," he growled, glaring up at Phil, "Psychic paper is cheating." 

The agent only blinked, and for a few infinite seconds Tony wondered if he was wrong after all, when a small smile quirked the left side of his mouth. "Alright." He snatched up the discarded paper--Phil was still using _his_ psychic paper, the dickhead--with a calculating look like he was making a silent list. "So why are you here, Mr. Stark?"

"Because you arrested me."

Phil pulled a face. "Please don't make this more difficult than it needs to be."

"Me, difficult?" Raising his cuffed hands in a pacifying gesture, he acqiesced. "I made a promise. I'm here to keep it." 

"A promise to whom?" Offering only a tight-lipped smile in answer made enough of a clear point that Coulson let it lie, for the moment at least. "What kind of promise?"

Deliberately open appearance and relaxed posture slipped into place like an impenetrable armor painted with misleading targets. The Mechanic hummed thoughtfully. "Nothing special. Your average mutual-backscratching kind of a deal. Part of the complimentary package. Nice car, free drinks, enough adventure to make Beowulf look like a lazy prick--which he was--and the always-thrilling pleasure of my company. Who refuses that kind of offer, I ask you?"

"I can't imagine." Was that sarcasm? Was Agent making an honest-to-God joke? Tony almost said as much before remembering that here, they weren't friends. They weren't even acquaintances. And it was better that way, really, for all involved. 

"Still, I suppose you suits see enough action around here, surrounded by miles of privately owned farmland." Demeaning wasn't exactly the tone he was going for, but he wasn't going to lie and say it wasn't pretty much geniune. "Defend the world from any cows lately?" 

Expression sour in a way that meant Tony had totally won, Phil argued stiffly, "Torchwood monitors alien threats the world over." 

"Alien threats like me? Sweetheart, I'm a tourist compared to what's out there," he scoffed. "The hitchhiker and me both." 

That sobered Coulson up fairly quickly, jumping straight to attention with a focused, keen glint to his steely grey eyes. "And what exactly is it that we should be worried about?"

Trap baited, the Mechanic concluded triumphantly, with a barely-concealed smirk; return to ally status goddamn well pending. "Assassins. Armies. The Titans, the Skrull, the Sycorax, the Daleks," he listed, not quite able to stop the aborted smirk from becoming a grimace at the latter, "Hell, even the Chitauri are poking their heads in unwanted places now. Earth's been calling attention to itself lately."

Coulson weighed that information silently. "You could be lying." 

"Oh, easily," admitted Tony, with an expectant and slightly manic smile. There were only so many ways to gauge truth, and at least three of them could be easily manipulated to his advantage. Or possibly they would just call in the telepath. Maybe they would just be that lucky, this time around. "Tell you what, though, I don't lie half as much as the guy in the other cell." Play the cards right, and they could remove the middle man entirely, get Xavier right where he needed to be for the Mechanic to uphold his end of the bargain. Namely, fixing Loki's head. 

Buisily searching for a reaction anywhere on Agent's top-notch poker face, he was taken a little by surprise at the faint whiff of wet tar that accompanied the twisting shadow Loki stepped out of. Coulson made no sound, frozen as if trapped in a single moment of time, as if all his muscles had spontaneously arrested and stiffened at the same time. "Speak of the devil," he grumbled, not really as shocked as he wished he could have been. "You couldn't have stayed put for five more minutes?" 

"I was bored." Loki flicked a finger gently, and Phil shuddered once in protest before flying sideways into the wall. The Mechanic stood, chains jingling, a curse on his lips which melted away when the agent slowed to phase neatly through the apparently less-than-solid wall. Goddamn magic. "You were slow." 

"I wasn't trying to get us out, I was trying to--"

"Betray me?" Voice edged with a fine and dangerous note, Loki's focus sharpened intesely. It was a little like staring down the point of a sword. "You could not if you tried, Mechanic."

The lack of trust here was disheartening, really, so much so that he wanted to suggest the two of them clasp hands and sing kumbaya, or failing that, find some other, funner way to relieve the mutual tension. "That... was actually not the goal, thank you very much. I mean, A, what is there to tell, and B, how would it possibly be to my advantage to turn on you right now? I'm the one in handcuffs, for fuck's sake, and--Loki?"

His face had drained entirely of color, an expression of nausous disbelief twisting his brow. "You did something. What did you..." 

"Handcuffs!" reiterated the Mechanic, for effect. 

"Please, it's not as if you couldn't escape them given a second's notice," he countered, clearly preoccupied with staring down at the palm of one hand, running his thumb over the pads of the fingers and damn, he had really nice hands, didn't he? 

Abruptly, the hitchhiker straightened again, alert like some feral cat. Tony was thinking maybe a panther, black with bright green, chatoyant eyes, the kind that glowed in the dark. He turned them on Tony without any kind of warning, stabbing him straight through with a murdurous look that was unwarranted, sure, but nothing he wasn't used to giving or recieving. "Take those off," he growled, definitely lashing out, and the Mechanic made a mental note to figure out later what had his panties in a bunch. 

Not that he was gonna drop it entirely for the moment, twisting his palm to angle a short repulsor blast into the metal, which buckled and fell apart. "Think I'll keep these, actually. Could be kinda handy." The twisted restraints disappeared into a pocket of his coat. "Seeing as you broke my last pair," he added with a wry look. 

Hitchhiker bit, tilting one eyebrow in obvious amusement. "Me? Please, you are as much at fault as I." Which made it a little more difficult for Tony to separate the fantasy from reality, though the two matched up probably more than they should. 

"Getting the feeling that one of us is going to end up in handcuffs on a fairly regular basis. We should have a safeword or something, this is what, the third time?" 

The eyebrow arched further. "The casino?"

Oh, yes, there was that. "Fourth," he amended, and pushed in the chair with a tinny scrape of metal over metal. Sparing a glance over at the spot where Coulson had disappeared, he wondered what exactly Loki had against using the door. Still, if the Mechanic could abuse science like that, he couldn't promise to do it responsibly or break the rules for any reason other than the fact that he wanted to. It was a fine line that he already had trouble blalancing on, observing the known laws of physics. "Why the hell can't you ever just use the door," Tony mused, and he'd had a longstanding problem with this mouth, it ran off without any sort of consent from his brain; one day it was definitely going to get his entire personality wiped clean by virtue of sheer annoyance if not outright antagonization. 

"Oh, but what would be the fun in that?" he asked, like he legitimately had no idea why anyone wouldn't prefer floating through walls or ceilings or two-dimensional spaces to anything more conventional. "I don't hear the mortal complaining, do you?" 

Oh, yeah, they were going to have words. "Okay, leaving all else, you just threw Phil through a wall. I like him, he's--he was a friend of Pe-- of mine." 

"I pushed him. Gently, even," argued Loki, and then looked apalled at the realization. "You should be thankful. Once I would have..." He stared down at his hands, that crazy light in his eyes dimming until there was something empty and utterly void of emotion staring out. It was the fucking scariest thing that the Mechanic had ever seen, and more familiar then it really should have been. 

That right there, that was the face Tony saw in the mirror the first time he'd made something that created instead of destroying. It was a face he'd never seen again in nine hundred years, until now.

Someone slammed into the door from the other side, trying to get back in. "We shouldn't keep them waiting, you know. They get cranky." 

Snorting softly in agreement, Loki nodded almost imperceptibly before grabbing at the Mechanic and dragging them both through his shadow. Which, incidentally, still felt a lot like being smothered with a tidal wave of bats after beung forced to swallow a hot coal. In short, not a fucking plan. 

Hitchhiker, as usual, didn't have the decency to look mildly disturbed even as Tony busied himself trying to fill his suddenly two-dimensional lungs with air and felt literal tears brimming in his eyes. "How...do you--" he wheezed at a slightly embarrassing pitch, " _Do_ that?" 

"You should try teleportation by dark energy. Things are set aflame that should be impervious to combustion." Loki shuddered ever so slightly as he blinked the tears from his eyes. "I think you might enjoy the experience," he added, with an insubordinate grin, which quickly faded as the pair took in their surroundings. "We should have gone farther." 

Tony tried, unsuccessfully, to turn that into a dick joke purely because it seemed like the sort of comment that should be turned into an innuendo, but gave up because his head was still ringing and there were suspicious fuzzy spots in his vision that had yet to be on their merry way. "Yeah, let's not leave the plane, actually. Expecting a visitor you'll wanna meet. Or...maybe not, but I kinda promised to introduce you."

A high-pitched and slightly stifled shriek emitted from the direction of the door. Loki put a finger to his lips, and the kid with the sweater-vest blinked, hand still hovering over her mouth. "Oh my God, you're not...but you should be in the cells!" 

"And yet, here we are," Loki drawled. "How odd. Now..." He held the finger up to his lips again, this time hissing a faint _shh_. 

The girl's jaw clapped shut as she deflated, apparently silenced, and Tony was getting the recipie for that trick, magic or no magic. _How?_ she mouthed instead. 

"Uh...teleportation?" Hitchhiker frowned, and the Mechanic amended. "Not teleportation. Don't ask me, I deal with time, not space." Sweater Vest's face took on a slightly purple hue with the effort of not sqealing. Sciencey type, his gut told him.

"Jemma?" called someone just out of sight, accompanied by the knell of footsteps that signified their privacy was not long for this world. "Where did you disappear to? He's here, he's practically--" A tight-curled head emerged next to the first, and two more slightly wide eyes. "They're not in the cells," he pointed out. 

The first -- Jemma -- nodded. "Nope." 

"Why aren't they in the cells?" 

"Teleportation, he said," she explained, with a manic glint still present in her eyes. 

Clearing his throat, the Mechanic stepped in, raising his hands for the second time that day, which was a habit he really hoped to be breaking eventually. Soon. Maybe. "No, I distinctly said not teleportation. Anyway, it's technically not my fault." For a moment, he felt something buzz in the back of his skull, then slip away, too fleeting to actually qualify as ominous but enough to register as 'bad touch'. Not that Tony had ever put much stock in I've-got-a-bad-feeling-about-this where judgements were concerned. Shaking it off, he turned to ask, "Isn't that right, dear?" 

It took maybe a quarter of a second to register that Loki had gone as white as a sheet, which made him a quarter of a second too late to prevent the hitchhiker swaying and collapsing to the ground. 

*

 _Damn, not again_ thought Loki as the surging tide of white swept over his senses. There was no particular order to the shutdown of every faculty left but the vaguest awareness of being. Sight was gone, and hearing, and feeling, for all the world as though he were falling freely once again. 

A sharp dagger of panic twisted within him, choking and insensate. Knowing his hands were reaching for something, he was yet unable to register what or why beyond the dim belief that there must still be _something_ left to anchor him. 

This, this was hell. Loki cared nothing for death, but this vast endless fall, trapped within the confines of his own mind--

Ah. Therein lay the key, quelling the rising rush of fear that threatened to drive him out of thought itself. Loki knew where he must be, and it was a place he could navigate well. Perhaps less so than preferred, these days. His mind.

Even as he became aware of it, the pain struck, almost enough to make the trickster wish himself numb again. Cracks, splinters, and jagged shards masquerading as belief, identity, trust. They had spread, his very soul had been tearing itself apart at the seams without his knowing. Even memories were distorted, not beyond recognition but twisted into untruths. One moment he watched helpless as Father and Thor roared and raged, the next he stood before Odin as his brother looked on, disappointment and distrust in his stormy eyes. 

"You are unworthy of this realm, you are unworthy of your title, you are unworthy," Loki wanted to deny it, but his silver tongue sunk like lead in his mouth, gagging him, "of the loved ones you have betrayed." 

_I could have done it, Father! For you, for all of us!_

_No, Loki_  

Blue bled out from under his skin until it covered everything. Two fathers looked on him in equal disgust. He stood, helpless and frozen to the spot as Rick Jones set off the bomb and the whole world was sucked into it; as one by one, trusted friends, shieldbrothers, Thor, struck blow after blow and left him cowering and stiff, a king on his knees. 

Unwanted, unloved, an abomination. The cracks spread. 

A solid, firm hand rested on his shoulder, and for a moment memories of kind, accepting eyes, easy laughter, lips against lips with a hint of a smile flashed before him. "Stark," he breathed into the soundless void, and jumped at the echo."

"Sorry to disappoint, but not quite." Loki flinched away from the unfamiliar voice. "Oh, and my sincerest apologies for upsetting you so. I was unaware that your...condition was so fragile. It seems that a light brush was all it took." 

 _Mortal_ was his first thought; the weary, kindly mouth curved in something that could have been sadness or pity. 

"Oh, yes. But not human." With the reply came a string of images, a gift of knowledge about this race of alienated others, abused and abhorred and innocent until provoked. _Mutant_. "Professor Charles Xavier," said the intruder, extending a hand in greeting. "How good to meet you."

"Loki," he managed hoarsely, voice ringing too loud in his ears. "Though I suspect you knew already."  

Xavier's weathered eyes crinkled good-naturedly as he helped Loki to his metaphysical feet. The trickster wondered briefly what it would be like to be good-natured. "Oh, there are times I would give anything for a healthy dose of cynicism," the old man replied, and he shuddered, trying not to feel cornered. 

"Stop doing that." His voice broke with tense frustration, feeling more vulnerable then he ever cared to on principle. He added, "please." 

Blinking, Xavier seemed to realize the line which he had so casually crossed. "Ah. Well, that might be harder than you think." His gaze flickered up, and Loki turned to see how the shattered walls had turned to shards of glass, each reflecting a thought or a memory or the dawning unrest on his own face, like a thousand mirrors. One such surface flickered with a quip about keeping an open mind, and behind him Xavier chuckled. 

 _Every thought on display_. It surged up in him like bile as every thought and memory he wished to bury so deeply that he himself would forget their existence was called, unbidden except by fear of their discovery, to the surface of the mirrors. The grounds beneath them shook as the bifrost screamed and tore a world apart, while Thor lay broken and bleeding before him, while Odin revealed his greatest lie yet, and while the void swallowed him into its ever-hungry maw, while he played at heroism at the cost of an innocent child's life. Loki saw reflected his own hatred and fear and anguish, and this mortal could see it all just as he did. 

In one mirror gleamed the face of the Other, teeth gleaming in a smile ready to tear out his throat, and Loki snarled, wiping every screen clean and thinking hard of the color red, vibrant enough to drown out thought itself. Still shaking, he glanced over his shoulder at the old man and saw a single tear tracking down his cheek. _Confusion_.  "I need," Loki began, then faltered. What did he need? "Fix this. Fix me." 

Xavier shook his head with the steadiness of the sage, pity in his eyes, an unbearable pity. "I can't undo your past, Loki." An idea flickered through the blanket of red, and he inhaled sharply with surprise. "And I will _not_ erase it from your memory. That will solve nothing."

"And why not? Everyone else has forgotten!" he argued, and the demon snarled behind them, the memory so poignant that for a moment he heard the Mechanic's laughter and swore that he was there with them. A colorful cocktail of emotions stirred in the trickster with the possibility. "Why is that bliss forbidden to me alone?" he continued, pleading as he envisioned it, being able to truly believe himself worthy of love or trust again, all his pain lost deep under a blanket of forgetfulness. That earlier moment of hesitation would never repeat, he would not have to fear destroying what he lo...what he cared for. 

And the lie? What did it matter when he was already so adept at lying to himself? 

Resolution held firm, Xavier held up a hand to stop the desire in its tracks. "Loki." 

"Please," he repeated in a wavering whisper. 

"This is not what you want," he dismissed, and oh how wrong that was, he wanted ignorance more than anything, but it was true that he was here for a different purpose. 

"Help me fix the cracks," Loki offered instead. 

*

"Hitchhiker." The whole world was spinning around him, awareness reduced to just this point in space, which should have been a bad sign except that Tony really didn't give a shit about anything outside his little bubble. Vaguely, he thought that maybe there were voices, hands trying to pry him away from Loki, but they didn't matter. "Hitchhiker, this is getting ridiculous, you have to wake up."

He smiled, a little pained, like lying to protect someone from the truth. Because how many times had he said that already, leaning over a form that should have been a corpse, almost had been, but he was going to be okay because damn if one more person was going to die on the Mechanic's watch. What had he gotten himself into?

The same thing he always did, in the end, he suspected. Serious, serious trouble. 

"He is perfectly alright," chimed a voice that wouldn't have registered half as familiar except that it spoke directly into his mind. "If a bit shaken. My fault, I fear. I was simply scouting ahead, and grossly overestimated the capability of his mental shields." 

The only thing for it was to turn around, because it was just rude not to have a conversation with a mind-reader face to face. It wasn't as though he could hide anything. Tony brushed his fingers over Loki's vacant eyes, drawing them closed until they began to flutter rapidly and stayed stubbornly open. 

Charles was changed since the last time they'd met. Less hair, for one thing. And there was a big difference between knowing about his accident and seeing the results; his fingers danced over the wheels of the big bulky chair, maneuvering him closer. "You must be the Mechanic."

"And you're Charles Xavier." 

"So they tell me," he confirmed jocosely, then frowned ever so slightly, wrinkles forming in the corners of each eye. "But you already knew that. Why did I forg--" His gaze flickered up, as though reading the answer off a banner on the wall, then settled into understanding. "Oh, Mephistopheles. Why on earth would you deal with him?" 

"He had something of mine. I wanted it back." It was then that Tony realized how little of Xavier's attention was truly on him. "Incidentally, that applies to the hitchhiker as well." 

Charles started, then nodded with a distracted air. "I shall do my utmost." Which, considering that he'd taken bullets and spinal injuries for the greater good, was relatively reassuring. With an encouraging glance that was almost kind enough to be a smile, the Mechanic stood, letting the old mutant through. 

Abruptly something shifted in the ground, a highly localized earthquake, and Tony all but fell against the door. He didn't mean to look back like some clingy high school girlfriend, but Loki's blank face was twisted up with pain, and the Mechanic's jaw clenched in worry. 

Xavier, the calm port in a storm that he was, reached up to one temple as his eyes fluttered shut. "The best thing you can do for him is stand back and let me help," he reasoned, "Tony Stark."

"I don't do well with the whole silent audience thing," he said, a bit testy but totally not defensive. Was he being dismissed? That was totally a dismissal. 

With one chastising look, Charles reminded him that he did have a tendency to be maybe a little bit defensive after all, and that it might be a good idea to leave of his own accord before he had a forced change of heart. There was no arguing with the professor sometimes, not when he was good and reasonable and also eerily powerful. 

Besides, wasn't this where he bowed out anyway? Out of the hitchhiker's life as soon as he was patched up and sent to wherever he wanted home to be next? Tony found himself hoping unreasonably hard that the whole 'You-have-my-alliance' thing was code for, 'I'm coming with you', because one more lonely stretch through time with nothing but J for company and he might toss himself into the void, just for a little variation. 

So he left, but he didn't go far, more settled down near Lola and sent the coordinates and a set of directions to JARVIS, who elected to drive himself over. The rest of Coulson's team were nowhere to be seen, and come to think of it they were still prisoners, weren't they?

"The mutant says we should trust you," chimed a very familiar voice. Tony bit back a fond smile, unsure whether or not there was a weapon trained on him. 

"He has a name." 

"More than we can say about you, huh?" Barton pointed out, a little more sharply than he'd obviously intended to, but then there was a reason that they gave the shooting to Hawkeye and left the interrogation for someone better at masking their emotions. With a grunt, Barton appeared to relax his hold on whatever weapon he was currently threatening to use. "He also says that you saved my life." 

Snorting, he shrugged. "Please, that? That was...no, actually, yeah, you owe me bigtime. The repercussions of that one are still biting me in the ass." Hoping that Barton could extrapolate the sheer inconvenience of anonymity from a flighty hand gesture, the Mechanic shifted to make room for the cranky assassin, whose wrath he'd never really been on the recieving end of before. 

"We let you out, didn't we? I'd call that just about even." Blowing away an imaginary speck from the end of his nose, Barton raised his eyebrows in challenge. "I don't deal with aliens." 

"Okay, one: I escaped, thank you, and secondly: you have and you will, sweetheart." He shrugged a terse acquiescence to the former and did nothing but glare in answer to the latter. It was pretty cute, really. Tony sighed. "Listen, you're married, right?" 

Fingers tensed, then curled around the plain gold band reflexively. "What the hell is it to you?" he confirmed, in the defensive tones of someone used to taking a lot of shit for the usual answer. Surprising, that he'd keep the ring on around the workspace, but then options were limited when the workspace was everywhere and job description was _everything and a quiver of arrows._

"How did you first meet Phil?" continued Tony, "When?" 

"I--" He scrambled for an answer, jaw twitching in shock before clamping tighter than before. "That's none of your business, Space Man." 

The Mechanic allowed himself a self-congratulatory smile. "Thought you might say that," he admitted, then lowered his voice to a dramatic, hoarse stage-whisper. "C'mon, sit, let me tell you a story."  

*

Hissing, Loki dropped the shard he carried, squaring his jaw as blood trickled between his fingers. "Helfire and damnation!" he cursed, and curled the hand into a loose fist. 

"What is it?" called Xavier, from across the patchwork mirror they were reassembling. Concern showed in his face even behind the casual facade. "Surprised?"

Loki peered into the discarded fragment, eyes narrowing as the scene played out before him, through his own eyes. A dark basement, lit only by an eerie blue glow, which glazed over his vision and, even muffled through the sands of memory, whispered something unintelligible. The spear came into view all at once, his focus in the glass sharp in stark contrast to the heavy darkness which surrounded the weapon. "I had nearly forgotten about it." 

"About what?" In a moment he was there, and the trickster felt a manic urge to push him away, to keep the memory for his own, feel that power singing in his heart again. The mutant inhaled sharply. "Ah," he managed. "You are a very...interesting man, Loki of Asgard." 

Turning to him, Loki felt the connection snap. "On second thought, let us leave this one be. Bury it, perhaps." 

"I'm sorry, my friend, but alas, we cannot." Xavier himself bent to retrieve the shard, large as a hand-mirror and smooth as the surface of a winter lake. "You'll need every piece intact if we are to repair anything at all." It slid neatly in place, the whole construction lying flat between them, as if a layer of ice coated the floor. Still, it was apparent that a web of minute cracks ran through it, leaving the surface splintered enough that one suspected a strong breeze would blow it apart. 

Loki's soul was lighter than he had long supposed it to be, though hardly whole and pure. He looked down on it with a mixture of apprehension and fond familiarity. "And now what?" 

"Well, I'm afraid that's quite up to you," remarked Xavier. The two stared into the fractured mirror as a hundred thoughts rippled over the surface. 

*

"Bullshit!" Barton crowed, "I call bullshit. You're making this up!"

Shaking his head, the Mechanic gestured again, reiterating, "I could be, but I'm really not. Three parts coincidence and five parts the whiskey they put in the coffee."  

"But a black hole?" Leaning back against JARVIS' front wheel, he crossed his arms. "That has gravity, dude, that would swallow the whole world. Even I know that, and I failed Earth Science twice."

"Really? I never took it," Tony commented. "But the whole coffeeshop existed in a pocket universe to begin with, contained the anomaly nicely. I'm still baffled about how he managed to escape; we almost didn't." His fingers itched for a drink, muscle memory of other conversations echoing through his synapses. It was all very distracting. Where was he again? "But lucky for us, Romanova knew probably a thousand ways to shatter glass with a pair of heels and she only needed one. And we were all tearing through the streets; I led, Nat dragged you behind us--"

"Budapest," interrupted the archer suddenly, brows furrowed in concentration. After a moment, he shook his head. "Wait, no..."

"Yeah. Budapest. Still one of my favorite stories. Anyway, when we all got to--"

"You and I remember Budapest very differently." 

"Nope," Tony answered, imploding the p and grinning like a loon because he wasn't sure whether he'd done enough to qualify for world's greatest asshole this week. "You just remember it wrong." 

Evidently unsure whether he should be insulted at that, Clint frowned. Seriously, Tony could smell smoke, coming out the ears like his brain had melted. He waved it away graciously with one hand. "Why don't I remember meeting Phil?" 

"You do, deep down." Standing slowly, Tony offered a hand to the archer. "Buried under lots of _stuff_. You see, no one can really take away a memory. Just impossible." 

"You," he murmured, then snarled, slapping away the offered palm. "I don't fucking know you! I've never met you before, and I definitely don't have to trust you now!" 

"April tenth, 2007, quarter to noon, Earth, America, New York, New York City, Bronx," rattled off the Mechanic, without pausing a beat. "I don't know exactly what you said, I was just a little busy myself, but you wanted to buy him a drink." 

"I know that!" 

"What kind of drink did you get?" 

"I--I don't--"

"Right, because you didn't get that date. Five minutes past noon, he crossed the street. You followed. There was a car--"

Wide-eyed, Clint murmured, "What the hell," in a way that was clearly more statement than question. 

"And you pushed him out of the way, but it was a fixed point, he was supposed to die, not you. Time has rules, and it brought you back to life, he collapsed the paradox." 

"That's impossible." 

"Nothing is impossible," the Mechanic dismissed. "Impossible is something the universe creates to test your limits. Impossible is a goddamn _challenge_." 

Silence rang in the wake of this pronouncement, during which the archer blinked slowly, his eyes so wide it was almost laughable, except Tony didn't feel like laughing. Impossible was telling him that a little thing like the fact that he shouldn't exist keep anyone from knowing the whole truth. 

Voice lighter than a whisper, Clint, ever the broken record, repeated, "Woah. What the _hell_ , Stark."

*

_Impossible. Impossible. Unlikely. Quite possibly the worst idea he had ever crossed paths with. By which he meant, yes, it was also impossible._

"You can't reject them all, my friend," he pointed out, stepping back from the puzzle for a bird's-eye perspective, for all the good it was likely to do. 

Loki scowled. "Watch me." Flipping through the list of ideas, the scowl deepened. "These are all flawed. Easily exploitable weaknesses. An Achilles heel? I've made Achilles' acquaintance. I have not the slightest desire to emulate that buffoon." 

"These are plasters to cover the wound while it heals. The firmer the new identity you build, Loki, the less any weaknesses in that shield will matter." He paced awkwardly, with the air of one who has not had occasion to pace in a long while. 

"You saw the spear, Xavier," spat Loki. "You saw the Other. You know that I cannot afford weakness even for such a short length of time." 

The mutant sighed deeply, and quite suddenly he was seated. Loki continued to search for an adequate solution. "Be that as it may, every construct has its flaw." 

The strategy, when it came, was quite simple. "Then I will choose one which I am likely to find simple to compensate for." Pulling  out a possible candidate, he tossed the small hologram to the professor, who caught it with some unsteadiness. Perhaps the long work was taking its toll. No matter; this particular model should have been a fairly quick recipe to boot. "Psyche's Cage, with a few variations."

A thoughtful noise rumbled deep in Xavier's throat. "You know, some find it much harder to keep a secret than, say, a promise." 

"Oh, but I find loopholes in promises far too often. I _hoard_ secrets." 

Standing again, he leaned over the mirror with a judicious eye. "Did you have any in particular in mind?"

Smile widening with bitter gall, Loki showed him. 

A frown split his brow. "Well. I find it surprising to believe that there is no-one else who shares in _that_ knowledge." 

"None now living," amended the trickster. "All else have forgotten." 

After a significant pause which was likely meant to be meaningful but which Loki spent in stubbornly refusing to consider another option, he nodded. The Cage was built in a matter of minutes, a force of magical and metaphysical prowess the equal of which did not exist, winding around the shards of mirror and binding them close with a thousand green threads. Heaving a sigh of relief, Loki felt the ever-present pressure ease into nonexistence.

The mutant, opposite the glowing construct, mirrored his sigh. "A last warning, before we finish," he offered. "This secret is the key to unravelling the Cage. Give it to anyone before you're healed, and they have the power to tear your mind apart." 

Rolling his eyes, Loki cut in, "I am well aware. It will not be a danger, I assure you." 

"I'm warning you, my friend, because the Psyche Cage is very well known for being undone by a...well, a lover." He flashed a thin smile, far too pointed for Loki's liking.

"Not. A danger," he seethed, eyes narrowed, and the mutant's gaze turned pitying again. "He is not...We are not--"

"No?"

"Well," Loki amended, filling his lungs slowly with air as his eyes opened on the real world once again. "There may have been a chance. Once. But I will not risk it now." Something was burning a hole straight through his chest, and would not cease. Perhaps he was hungry.

Xavier opened his eyes, arms propped on the wheels of his chair with two fingers pressed to one temple. "I'm sorry."

Clearing his throat, the trickster ignored the foolish sentiment, brushing himself off as he rose. "I believe thanks are in order, dear Professor. We wil discuss payment the moment I ensure that my ally has not left without me."

The concept of asking recompense for his services seemed to baffle the mutant slightly, a vaguely surprised expression dawning in his clear eyes. Loki was glad; it meant that he had not had the time to plan in advance what he wanted in return, and there were a rare few who could make a beneficial deal at the drop of a hat like that. Still, he was...grateful, sincerely, and would agree to anything unlikely to severely cross the threads of his ongoing plans. A second's crooked smile communicated the thought and thanks in one.

"Hitchhiker!" 

As before, the smile grew before the trickster managed to check it, and he broke it off with a mumbled curse as a weathered hand found his shoulder. "Mechanic." The urge to tack on some foolish pet name was overpowering, but Loki had to start somewhere, after his new realization of what must be done to protect himself. No more time for such jests. 

Unaware of his struggle or newfound resolution, Stark stepped up to Loki's side, hand still resting on his arm. "Good to see you not comatose. You're looking sane, come to think of it, at least on a comparative scale. Still wouldn't hesitate to recommend a therapist or a marijuana brownie, but I'll take what I can get." From this angle, his eyes were visible, bright with laughter and something disconcertingly close to relief. "Feeling fixed?"

Damn it all, but this would be more difficult than Loki had anticipated. "Quite," he replied tersely, then turned the sentiment against him with a scoff. "Tread carefully, or one might assume that you were worried for me." 

"What can I say? You make quite the fetching damsel in distress, sweetheart. Which reminds me," he diverted, hand lifting from Loki's arm as he crossed over to Xavier's chair. "I got a crazed archer next door dealing with an assload of newly resurfaced suppressed memories. Might have possibly been a little bit my fault, but--"

"They can remember?" An iron band wrapped around Loki's lungs and tightened, his eyes widening involuntarily. 

"Just Hawkeye, and it took a hell of a lot of work on my part. Not sure whether we should try and bury them again." 

The mutant shook his head. "I don't tamper with memories." 

Disappointed, the Mechanic shrugged. "He'll survive me, I think. Anyway--"

"You want to know about the Chitauri spear," interjected Xavier, holding up a hand, and Loki leaned against the lab table, interest piqued.

"Well, I mean, we know it controls a mini-localized telepathic field, and looks like a glowy blue cheese knife, but I want to know _what it is_." He leaned forward, bent over the seated mutant even with his low vertical trend. 

Humming aloud, Xavier put two fingers to his chin, thumb dancing over his lower lip thoughtfully, chasing the shadow of a beard that no longer grew. "Unusually powerful even for a telepathic field. Actually, if applied right, I believe it has the potential to completely hijack the will."

"So what use could the Vashta Nerada possibly have for it?" Ah, yes, his damned inquisitive nature. Loki did not particularly want it known that he was prophesied to bring the end of all things, nor that twice now he had been recruited for unknown purposes by forces so malicious that they made even his skin crawl. 

"I don't know," lied Xavier, with a sidelong glance at Loki nonetheless, full of the ever-present concern, like a mother hen fussing over a wolf. "But I do know how you may find out. The spear is tied to an infinity stone. The mind gem acts as a battery even over a significant distance. I've been attempting to retrieve the stone for a long while, but..." The offer was plain, and Loki bit down on his rebellious tongue when Xavier added, "Consider it payment." 

Entire body stiffening where he stood, the trickster felt all of his attention draw into sharp focus, the words echoing in his ears.  _Infinity stones_. This did not bode well; this could well be the worst possible circumstance that could have arisen out of such a mystery. The implications were staggering, the potential for mass destruction disconcertingly high, and the chance of a good outcome incredibly low, almost bordering on impossible. The stones had been scattered far and wide, yes, but each on its own could topple whole galaxies. Together they could wipe all life in the universe from existence.

And worse yet, Loki knew exactly what the Mechanic planned to do anyway. "Then I guess we're going to find the mind gem," he vowed, with a mad grin. 


End file.
